The Incredible Expanding Shopping Cart
From this graphic one might erroneously conclude that the past 15 years have seen an unprecedented increase in the size of grocery carts. If only that were indeed the case there would be no reason to even write this article but, alas, it’s not. The carts are all the same size. What has changed over the intervening years is the amount of food you can purchase using one good, ole’ American twenty-dollar bill.
Quite a difference, hmm?
Heck, in 1998 you could eat for a week and get pretty full in the process. But by the time 2005 rolled around, a mere seven years later, the pickings were pretty slim: fruit, veggies, pancake syrup, cleaning products. Not much excitement to be found in there. And by the year 2013 we’re down to whatever that is in the third cart. Some bleach and a bags of sunflower seeds and popcorn? Twenty bucks these days makes for a pretty sad menu.
How much have prices changed? Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell because the government vastly understates the actual inflation rate by excluding food and energy from their calculations. It seems that our economic and political experts operate under the mistaken assumption that the price of these two basic necessities either 1) is negligible or 2) never changes. Either belief should immediately qualify them as blithering idiots and disqualify them to ever work in the public trust again.
Having said that, we visited USInflationCalculator.com and, even using the government’s laughably low numbers, found that inflation has increased the price of groceries by 43% over the period of time from 1998 to 2013. It appears that Andy Jackson is getting a mite feeble in his old age. Who could blame him? The man is 246 years old!
The real point here is that inflation is real. It affects your quality of life to a much larger extent than your government will ever admit. You’re getting poorer. Your kids are going to be poorer. Your grandkids will be lucky if they still have an American dollar left to spend. The question is - what can you do in the face of this slow motion economic disaster? Well, you could head for the hills and live in Ted Kaczynski’s old Montana cabin and hunker down with a few cases of MREs. Or maybe build a homemade rocket ship and start your own civilization somewhere else.
But what we suggest as the very best way to beat inflation is begin moving your assets out of the stock market and into income properties. See? You don’t have to drop off the grid or risk the vagaries of interplanetary travel in order to preserve your portfolio wealth.
The JasonHartman.com Team
"The Complete Solution for Income Property Investors"
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